Big Little Bronzes

In Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art last week stood tablefuls of statuettes that had been modern for three millenniums. They were products of the ancient island civilization of Sardinia, about which almost nothing is known.

Nowadays the island is dirt-poor, but judging by the ruins of some 7,000 small stone castles, it was a prosperous, well-populated land 1,000 years before Christ. Carthage conquered the island in 450 B.C. and reduced its people to a relatively barbaric state. Soon much of Sardinia's ancient sculpture lay buried under layers of silt and rubbish, not to be uncovered again until Italian archeologists began digging it up a century ago.

Her statuettes were part & parcel of Sardinia's prehistoric religion. The natives built their temples encircling wells and pools, filled them with carvings of marble and later with bronzes. One of the earliest and largest works in the show, 17 inches tall, looked like a cross between a double-bladed ax-head and a woman, probably represented the mother goddess whose cult once encompassed the Mediterranean world. Later representations kept the same silhouette but added more human details: a huge head balanced on a towering neck and a cloak spread to resemble wings.

Wolves, angry-looking bulls, and dainty deer, their legs straight as toothpicks, had also flocked from Sardinian molds, along with warriors in short tunics and horned helmets. Armed with bows and two-handed broadswords, the warriors seemed much bigger than their few inches. They were long-nosed and popeyed, as skinny and fierce as cranes at mealtime.

The Sardinian sculptures were paired off in the exhibition with works by such contemporary trail blazers as Picasso, Archipenko, Braque and Giacometti. The 20th Century sculptures were similar but less meaningful, for while the Sardinian bronzes embodied something of their own culture, the moderns reflected nothing except older and more earnest art.

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